Something bad occurred. Let’s figure out what, why, and how, and make any necessary changes to make future occurrences of bad thing less likely.

I don’t see how that is scapegoating.

The OP is insisting on finding people to blame, and finding people to fire. That sounds like scapegoating to me.

If I hired a babysitter and on their watch, one of my kids caught on fire, yes, I'd insist on attributing that to the person whose one job it was to ensure their safety, and at least not hiring them again. Is that scapegoating or common sense? Nobody's saying they should get the guillotine, but perhaps they shouldn't be in the business of managing fire safety at the Notre Dame since it's obviously not something they're good at.

CV headline: "Oversaw safety at a national landmark -- Allowed only a single billion-dollar fire"

> If I hired a babysitter and on their watch, one of my kids caught on fire, yes, I'd insist on attributing that to the person whose one job it was to ensure their safety, and at least not hiring them again.

Interesting that the responsibility stops there. What about the person that hired the obviously incompetent babysitter? They don’t appear to have sufficient judgement to be responsible for kids.

I fear you may have taken my simplified hypothetical too seriously. Nobody is suggesting one man or woman bears 100% of the responsibility for what happened at Notre Dame. Yes, it's multiple people. They should all face some consequences if only not being trusted to do those jobs.

That would still raise a lot of questions right? Who hired the babysitter and what kind of vetting did they do? How did the fire start, was it due to poor maintenance and who was responsible for that? Why did none of the automated fire safety equipment work and who manufactured and installed that? Etc etc. it’s pretty pointless to just blame one person in the chain and call it a day

Seems like you get the point then. Yes, investigate and find the likely several people who have proven themselves unfit for their responsibility, and stop relying on them for that.